Launching NASA on a Path to Nowhere: Analysis

The president released his FY 2011 budget Monday, and his policy for NASA's human spaceflight program sets the nation on a course to second-class status in space. Instead of setting our national sights on the moon, nearby asteroids, or more distant destinations, President Obama is declaring that human spaceflight is unimportant to U.S. national interests.

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He's not saying so directly. But his budget actions speak loudly. He has cancelled NASA's next-generation Constellation Program, including the Orion spacecraft and both rockets planned to return American explorers to deep space, to the moon and beyond.

A little history: under three different administrations, NASA has lost more than 25 percent of its buying power in the past 20 years. Despite those cuts, the agency managed to operate the shuttle and build the International Space Station (ISS). But it lacked a long-term goal in space, and that lack of direction and failure to replace the vulnerable shuttle led in part to the Columbia accident in 2003 that killed seven of my colleagues.

Now, seven years later, the president's budget shows that he and NASA have already forgotten the lessons of Columbia. Without a goal worthy of the serious risks of human spaceflight, we will be putting our astronauts in danger to do nothing more than crew a research outpost. Even though I helped build it, the space station is not an ultimate destination. The ISS is a stepping stone to more ambitious exploration.

It is true that President Obama inherited a Constellation Program (a return to the moon and deep space) that the Bush administration underfunded by more than 35 percent since its inception in 2004. Because of that lack of support, today Constellation is badly behind schedule. Those delays also raised costs for the development of the Ares I booster. Yet NASA flew a successful early version of Ares I last October. While not a long-term successor to the shuttle, restored funding could have put this rocket in service to the ISS by 2015, and restored our own access to space.

"The new budget, announced Monday, seems merely an attempt to disguise the demise of U.S. leadership in space."

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The new budget, announced Monday, seems merely an attempt to disguise the demise of U.S. leadership in space. The president does away with Constellation, its Orion spacecraft, and its Ares I and Ares V boosters. The abrupt cancellation means the U.S. no longer wishes to send its explorers to the frontiers of knowledge and spacefaring skill. We are deliberately choosing to have no better space capability than do Russia, China, or India.

During the height of the shuttle program in the 1990s, we launched six or seven shuttles and about 40 astronauts per year into orbit for science and defense purposes. Starting next year, and for the foreseeable future, just four Americans will make it into space annually—as passengers on foreign rockets. Is this a bold new course for the nation?

After the shuttle orbiters retire late this year, American astronauts will rent seats on Russian rockets headed to the ISS. We won't field an alternative spacecraft for five years or more. The president will instead farm out the nation's access to low Earth orbit to commercial firms. None of the rockets NASA has contracted to deliver cargo to the ISS has flown, and betting our nation's sole access to space on industry's ability to replicate fifty years of NASA experience on the fly is unwise. NASA should fly a new crewed spacecraft as quickly as possible, then move to commercial firms once they have a proven record of reliable cargo services.

While NASA hopes its commercial effort will produce a ship that can service the ISS, the end of Constellation defers indefinitely the building of a heavy-lift rocket. Without such a Saturn V-class launcher, Americans will never get out of low Earth orbit (where we have been marooned for nearly 40 years). Instead, the Ares V heavy-lifter has been replaced with "research and development" on building such a vehicle, someday. With no ability to launch humans past the ISS, we will watch, helpless to follow, as China pursues its determination to be the next nation to send its explorers into deep space.

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The president's rejection of a clear goal to send humans into deep space by a certain date eliminates a future in space for the brightest of our young scientists and engineers. The space talent pool began emptying Monday, as promising innovators turn to careers in other industries. What student would pursue a career in space science or astronautics with the knowledge that the country deems leadership in space unimportant?

The president appointed his Augustine Committee last May to review the nation's human spaceflight plans. Of their options, he accepted the move to put our human access to space on a commercial footing, with great uncertainty as to safety, schedule and cost. The nation has no backup plan if this effort fails.

But the president rejected the most important of the Augustine observations, that a great nation must fund an exploration program worthy of its vision. In fact, the committee recommended an extra $3 billion per year to renew NASA's human exploration efforts. The president's team instead chose to add only a billion dollars annually, missing a chance to remedy past underfunding and to take the U.S. forward in space. Although $787 billion was "available" last year for stimulus spending, finding $3 billion this year to stimulate our high-tech economy and talent pool proved impossible.

By proposing a budget for NASA that barely exceeds inflation, and failing to renew a commitment to send the U.S. beyond low Earth orbit, the administration is turning away from the dominance in space technology America has enjoyed since Apollo. This nation once put its confident footprints on the moon. Following the president's misguided course, we will trudge in retreat from the frontiers and promise of space.

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